The Clockwork Century: Fiddlehead Part 13

Gunfire and smoke. A baby who couldn't sleep through it, not even with the drugs. A drowning. A bomb. A mad dash that left no one behind, even for all of that.

"Yes. A small team, hired by Mr. Lincoln. Led by a captain named Kirby Troost." He let out a short laugh, right in time with a dip in the road that made the car lurch. His voice caught in his throat. "Funny little man. Not much to look at, but that's partly why he was so good at his job."

"Was? So he's left the business? Did Lincoln bring him out of retirement?"

"Oh, I have no idea what he does these days. He got drummed out of the service, and the service closed down behind him. It was a bad story-made the papers around here; you might've seen it. He got caught up with the wife of a congressman, until she turned up murdered. Her husband tried to hang it on Troost, and had just enough money and power to make it stick. Never mind that all the evidence said it hadn't been Troost at all."

"This is ringing a bell," Wellers said, scratching at a spot behind his ear. "Was this the Cartinhour scandal?"

"That's the one."

"The wife's own mother wouldn't have recognized her, or that was what I heard from the doctor who served as coroner at the time." Wellers scratched thoughtfully at his chin. "Yes, I remember it now. The subject was quite the rage, if you're the sort to watch for gossip."

"And you're not?"

"No." He shook his head. "I knew about it through Mary. You know how she keeps up with these things."

"Oh, yes. Mary. Well." Gideon reclined more comfortably, away from the rattling door and against a st.u.r.dy pillow. "Troost didn't kill the congressman's wife, and I'd bet my life on that. Cartinhour either did it himself or had it done. As for Troost, he took one last trip on the railroad, out of D.C. into G.o.d knows where. And about a year later Cartinhour himself turned up at a card table with his throat slit."

"Pure coincidence, I'm sure."

"Oh, absolutely. But apart from that one coincidence, I haven't heard so much as a rumor about Troost in half a dozen years."

"You two will have some catching up to do."

"Eh." Gideon gazed at the countryside zipping past out the window. "He's not much of a talker. But he's a quick one, and slicker than you'd ever expect. I never worried about him too much. He's the sort of man who always lands on his feet. It'll be good to see him." He surprised himself to realize that he meant it. "I wonder what he's been up to all this time."

Nelson Wellers shrugged. "Wait until Friday, and it sounds like you can ask him yourself."

Eleven.

Maria arrived at Fort Chattanooga the next morning, having slept on the train and dreamed of dead cannibals who wouldn't stop chewing. She awoke abruptly as the train shuddered to a halt. For a moment she was flooded with relief, then she remembered that her nightmares weren't really nightmares-not the usual, impossible kind-and the half-sleeping horror rushed back to take its place. She shook her head and wished for a spot to wash her face, have a drink of water, and flush away some of the disorientation left over from the restless night.

But here was her stop. She needed to gather her wits and the nurse's papers and get back to business.

Sleeping on trains was never something she enjoyed, and now, more than ever, she wished there'd been some alternative. She stumbled half awake down the steps and onto the platform, then went toward the station bleary-eyed, all the while watching to see if anyone had followed her here, or if anyone was waiting to pick up the chase. It felt like too many things to concentrate on at once. In the back of her mind she feared that an entire battalion of rogue agents could be on her tail and she might've slept right through them picking up her scent.

"Miss Boyd!" a familiar voice called.

It stopped her in her tracks. After a flash of panic, she saw the speaker and recognized him as a friend rather than foe. It surprised her enough to jolt her more fully awake. "Mr. Epperson?"

"Henry, please!" he suggested for what must have been the dozenth time. Jostling against the flow of the debarking pa.s.sengers, he swam the short distance toward her-hand up, waving in her general direction. Upon reaching her, he touched the front of his hat and said, a little out of breath, "I'm glad I caught the right train. There are two others coming in from Richmond today, and I didn't know which one you'd taken. I heard there was an incident at the hospital. What happened?"

She sighed wearily. "I'll tell you over breakfast, if we can find a spot that's quiet enough." She glanced around the station and saw nothing promising, so she asked, "Do you know of a place where we could get a bite to eat? Perhaps some coffee? I don't know the city at all."

"I do know of a place, yes. It's just across the street."

As promised, across the street was a small cafe that specialized in tea and baked goods, but also offered a light breakfast. Maria attempted to make note of the expense in order to bill the Pinks later, but Henry wasn't having it, and he bought the morning meal for them both.

At a small table in the big front window, they warmed themselves with coffee and waited for their food. The street outside was crowded with people, mostly train travelers and soldiers, for this was a military garrison, after all. In fact, if Maria remembered correctly, at least some portion of the city was walled.

Just like Seattle, the thought flickered through her head.

Since Henry was more familiar with the locale than Maria, she asked him. "I understand this fort has a wall around it. Is that right?"

"Most of it. The Tennessee River curves through the city, cutting it in half. There's a wall around the south side-the military and industrial complex, where we are right now-that starts at one point on the river and ends at Moccasin Bend, near the foot of Lookout Mountain."

She struggled to picture it. "So, basically, the southern end of the city is ringed by the river on one side, and the wall around the rest?"

"Yes, ma'am, that's about right."

"And Lookout Mountain..." Her question trailed off as a serving girl put two plates in front of them. Maria had eggs and toast. Henry settled for biscuits with honey and a side of bacon. "Lookout Mountain," she began again, snapping her napkin open and placing it across her lap. "That's where our friend's family is taking vacation, correct?"

"Correct," he said discreetly. "Near there, at any rate."

"Within the wall?"

"Just outside it, I should think."

They kept the conversation chatty and open, lest anyone overhear and think they were whispering about something interesting. "Perhaps we should pay them a visit before we leave town," she suggested.

He spread a big pat of b.u.t.ter across the nearest biscuit. "That might be fun. In fact, I'm here on a mission from their favorite uncle because I need a word with their porter. I have paperwork they'll require, and expenses for the road."

"How kind of their uncle," she murmured around a sip of coffee, a.s.suming they spoke of Lincoln.

"He's a kind man indeed." Henry let his gaze slip around the room, checking to see if anyone might be listening. No one showed any undue interest, but there were still several people within hearing range: two serving girls, another pair of customers, and the old woman who took orders at the counter.

Maria saw what Henry was doing, and came to the same conclusion. It wasn't safe to speak openly, not quite yet. So they chatted idly about nothing in particular until the room had cleared, leaving only the counter woman, who was engrossed in the daily paper on the other side of the shop.

Finally, Henry leaned in, the gesture charmingly, deliberately calibrated to look like flirtation. "The hospital," he prompted. "What happened there?"

It was Maria's rather well-informed opinion that Henry did "flirtatious" very nicely. She leaned forward to meet his intimately styled invitation, and replied in a similar tone. "The captain was most accommodating. She gave me a gift on my way out the door, but someone else wanted it. Badly. A firefight broke out in the surgical ward. I escaped."

In precisely the same purr he would've used to seduce her, he asked, "With an ambulance? I heard that one went missing, and turned up downtown."

She performed a girlish giggle, letting the ruse run wild. "It was faster than my feet, and I didn't see any horses handy. I made do."

"Were you followed?"

"Two men. Neither one worth describing. Lost them on an electric streetcar."

He set down his fork and reached one hand across the table to take her fingertips and kiss them. "Is there any chance anyone knew you were headed for the trains?"

"I couldn't say, though I did my best to remain ordinary and unremarkable. And I don't think anyone saw me buy my ticket or get on board. Speaking of which ... how did you know I'd be in Tennessee?"

"I didn't," he admitted, releasing her fingers and retrieving his fork. "But based on some ... increased media attention, our uncle recommended that I come here and help our incoming visitors with their packing and their papers."

Maria gathered the gist and nodded. "I see."

"And I thought you'd turn up here next, considering what I heard about the hospital." He lowered his voice. "You'd need a way out, and you wouldn't be ready to come home yet. They'd be expecting that, and watching the northbound trains."

"Excellent detective work, Mr.... Henry. If you ever tire of the marshals, you should try your luck with the Pinks."

"Thank you, ma'am, but I'm happy with the badge I wear already." He winked at her, and the front door opened, admitting three hungry soldiers into the warm little s.p.a.ce.

The rest of their breakfast was spent in more idle chatter, and when they were finished Henry proposed they find a more private venue. "Under normal circ.u.mstances I'd never suggest such a thing, but I think you ought to join me in my hotel room over at the Saint George," he told her. She did not think it was her imagination that he said it with blus.h.i.+ng cheeks.

She smiled at him, and when he held out his arm at an angle, she took it. She wasn't so much older that it looked strange-or she didn't think so, at any rate-and if he thought she'd be embarra.s.sed by the suggestion or even the company, he had another thing coming. He was a polite, intelligent young man, strong and good-looking in an understated, easygoing kind of way, even with the gla.s.ses. His nervousness around her might've been due to his age-mid-twenties, she would've guessed-or her own notoriety, but either way it added to his charm. And anyway, sneaking up to an attractive lad's hotel room in the middle of the day? Bah. She'd been accused of worse things. This didn't even break the top ten.

His room was a clean but empty s.p.a.ce, much like any inexpensive hotel room around the world. It was s.p.a.cious and comfortably private, though it overlooked Broad Street, where the traffic was heavy and sometimes wild. Horses balked at motor vehicles and military men barked orders back and forth across the way; big engines moved big machines up and down the too-narrow thoroughfare, clipping the curbs, sc.r.a.ping stones, and frightening the city's dog population into a frenzy of howled complaints.

"It's not too ... quiet," Henry apologized. "But it's tidy, and I can sleep through almost anything. Real close to the train station, too. So there's that."

"It's almost as big as my apartment in Chicago," she a.s.sured him, with only a slight degree of understatement. "And there's no need to make excuses for the background noise. The more the better, I say. Let it drown out any stray words that might drift through the walls. But, do you mind ... could I bother you to turn up the heat? I'm a cold-natured thing, I'm afraid, and the window isn't keeping enough November outside."

He went to the radiator and adjusted its controls, sending pressurized, boiling water squealing through the pipes. "That's another nice thing about this place," he said, recoiling from the heater's valve and waving his hand at it. "Not as much smoke as a fireplace. I hear we'll have electric warmers in every home one of these days, and won't that be nice? And maybe they won't be so uncomfortable to set."

"Thank you, Henry. I appreciate it. I hope your hand isn't burned...?"

"Just a smidge of pink, ma'am. If that's the worst I do to myself today, I'll be in real good shape. Now, at the risk of seeming ungallant, I believe we should sort out our information," he said stiffly.

She smiled, hoping he understood she was smiling for him, not at him. "At the risk of seeming unladylike, I'll take the bed. These papers will require some spreading out, and the desk in the corner won't do the job."

Henry drew a chair up to the bed and Maria sat on its edge, emptying the satchel of Captain Sally's notes and organizing them as best she could. Sometimes the dates were fuzzy or imprecise, and the nurse's grasp of numbers wasn't too much keener than her grasp of letters. Still, Maria marveled at the tenacious dedication of a near-illiterate woman writing so much, at such depth and length.

"There must be a whole novel's worth of material here!" Henry exclaimed.

"It's difficult to read at times, not merely for the content, but for the presentation," she said gently. And then she walked him through the letters, hitting the high points and marking some of the more interesting bits with a pencil.

It took two hours, and even then, Maria felt like the summing up had been too shallow.

Henry stood over the bed, festooned with its brittle sheets of d.a.m.ning paper, and put his hands on his hips. "We should send a telegram back to the Lincoln house and let everybody know what you found in Richmond ... but we couldn't send off enough taps in a week of Sundays. Not even if we cut it down tighter than an obituary."

"No, not even then. Here's what I recommend: We'll write out the most important parts, digested down from this ... this serialized journal. Then we'll express the important parts up to the Lincolns, and mail the original journals separately. But not to the Lincolns," she added suddenly.

"Why not?"

"Because they're being watched. Someone wants Gideon Bardsley, and he's staying there. Lincoln strikes me as a competent man, and with Nelson Wellers there to help, I'm not too worried about his personal safety, but we can't a.s.sume that packages won't be intercepted."

"We could send the originals to the Pinks," Henry suggested.

She grinned. "Precisely what I was thinking. I'll box it up and send it to Mr. Pinkerton for safekeeping. If it's not secure there with him, there's no hope for it at all. Is there a Western Union office nearby?"

"Back at the station, yes. I'll run around the corner and grab some wrapping paper and twine, and you start jotting down the important bits. I'll be right back."

Maria took out her pencil.

Regarding the notes of Venita "Mercy" Lynch, nurse formerly of the Robertson Hospital in Richmond, Virginia: Approximately three hundred pages of letters about the northwestern port city of Seattle, where a heavy, poisonous gas has decimated the city, causing it to be largely abandoned....

She kept writing until she'd revealed it all: the gas, the city in the Northwest, and the connection between the drug manufactured there ... and the weapon proposed by Katharine Haymes.

In conclusion ...

Maria heard Henry's feet on the stairs, returning with the promised paper and twine. She thought hard and fast, and gave up on formalities.

In conclusion, gas weaponry is a dangerous, poorly understood can of worms we can't afford to open.

It took four sheets of paper. When Henry let himself inside, she folded them in half and stuffed them into an envelope, then began stacking the nurse's letters in a tidy pile before wrapping them up.

Henry took her pencil and reached for the envelope. "I don't suppose you know the address for the Lincoln estate off the top of your head, do you?"

"I know it well enough. But let's not write anything down until we get to the s.h.i.+pping office," she urged.

"You're right, you're right. I wasn't thinking."

The war had made mail problematic between the dueling nations, and although the Union still used the United States Postal Service, the Confederacy relied upon independent carriers. If you wanted to pa.s.s notes back and forth across the Mason-Dixon line, you either used Western Union or you smuggled the messages yourself. Since everyone knew Western Union was the most reliable way to communicate with the other side, it was watched, and tracked. If you had to use it, you didn't talk to anyone except the officer who took your money and stamped your package, and even he couldn't be trusted.

When both packages had been successfully-if surrept.i.tiously-s.h.i.+pped, Maria and Henry left the Western Union office and stepped back into the chilly afternoon. It was crisp and clear, in the way of such places with brutally cold winters but not much snow. Maria's breath was cold in her chest and warm in the air, where it crystallized and hung in a satisfying fog that reminded her she was still alive.

She tucked her hands into her jacket pockets and wormed her chin deeper into her scarf, until only her eyes and nose poked out.

"And now," she said, the words warming her lips against the wool. "We need to find ... a porter, you said?"

"Ah. Yes." Henry checked his pocket watch and nodded. "Down at the landing, in an hour. He'll meet us there, and perhaps we'll talk him into a late lunch. Have you ever had catfish fried right out of the river?"

"I don't think so...?"

"That means *no,' because if you'd ever tasted it, you'd never forget it. Come on now, this way. We'll have better luck finding a cab on the next street over, where the army vehicles don't block up all the roads. It's only a short walk to the landing, but you look like you're half frozen to death already, and we've only been outside a minute. I swear, you must be a little icicle all the time, up there in ... in your new hometown," he caught himself. He ducked quickly aside as two soldiers carrying a steamer trunk between them begged his pardon.

He was right, so Maria played along. Keep the public chatter friendly. Let the city hear their accents and know they were local enough, and here on friendly business, and not anyone to be given a second glance. Maria attracted a second glance or two, but she'd become adept at hiding behind her hair, her hat, and now-conveniently enough-her scarf.

True to his guess, Henry found them a carriage to hasten the ride to Ross's Landing, a wide dock on the river that had developed into its own small neighborhood, serving the merchants who came and went in the steamboats, riverboats, paddlers, flat-bottom barges, and military freighters alike. It was a rougher part of the city-if roughness might be gauged by how few women were present, and how many men were out of uniform.

She saw boat workers and army boys on leave, dockhands and s.h.i.+pping magnates, laboring men, and white and colored men in big wool coats and boots caked with riverbank mud. She scanned the labels stenciled on crates as they were stacked and loaded by big-armed fellows on the curb, under the watchful eyes of an occasional officer or overseer. They seemed to hold mostly munitions and military necessities: tents, blankets, uniforms, horse tack, diesel fuel, motor parts, tools, engine grease, satchels, mess kits, bulk bags of flour and corn, and heaven only knew what else.

Down by the river's edge where the boats docked close, the piers were s.h.i.+ny and scrubbed, painted and repainted to rebuff the elements and rust. Street vendors offered newspapers, coffee, and fried fish wrapped in paper; they quietly hawked black-market pa.s.ses for rations, and sold information by the sc.r.a.p.

Maria and Henry stopped at a boat called the Memphis Queen, which was moored permanently at the edge of the landing and served as a saloon and meeting place on the water. The gangplank swayed under Maria's feet, bobbing with the slap and fall of short waves against the boat's sides, left over from the wakes of the big CSA crafts that puttered down the river's center. Once on board, the motion was minimal. She was glad-after spending the night on the rails, she wouldn't have ruled out a minor case of seasickness, even with the sea a thousand miles away.

"This was our contact's suggestion," Henry explained. "He likes this place."

Out of date and out of service, the Memphis Queen was nonetheless a pretty thing, with gingerbread rails and a cheerful blue-and-white paint job that called to mind the Bonnie Blue Flag. An old-fas.h.i.+oned paddler, it had been retired in favor of the diesel models that had become more popular, courtesy of Texas. Best of all, the s.h.i.+p felt private. Full of nooks and crannies, doors that locked, and shades that were easily drawn.